Subject: Italian Holden
From: Tania Da Ros (rostania@tin.it)
Date: Tue May 23 2000 - 09:00:56 GMT
Hi everybody!
I was just talking to Mattis yesterday and I thought I could forward part of
it to the list. At first I didn't think it was a good idea, but Mattis
seemed to think it was, so here it is:
>Welcome to the bananfish list! I hope you enjoy our conversations.
I am, thank-you. When I joined the list I immediately felt at home, which
doesn't happen (at least to me) that often. I'd actually like to comment on
a discussion the list was having about translations. I've read some of
Salinger's stuff in Italian and some in original, so I particularly feel the
problem. In Italian we say 'tradurre è tradire', which means 'to translate
is to betray'. The two words in Italian
are almost identical and, as much as I'm grateful to translators everywhere
for allowing me to read hundreds of books that would otherwise be
inaccessible to me, I have to say that reading Salinger in Italian and in
English makes a world of difference. Here, just to make an example, 'The
catcher in the rye' is entitled 'The young Holden'. The book is still great
and all, but it's so different! Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me
that the way Holden talks highly reflects the actual vernacular of people of
his age. I mean, when I read it in English it feels like a real person
talking. I'm I wrong here? Is it me, who, not being American, got this
wrong? I'm saying this because in the translation I read he talks in the
strangest way, a way that certainly doesn't even vaguely resemble the way
somebody, anybody, would talk; at least not in this planet anyway.
>>I know what you mean about crying for joy when rereading JDS, but it is
not something that is easily expressed in words. Why don't you try it
though?>>
I'm not sure I'll be able to, 'cause I'm not at all sure it's possible to,
but I'll give it a try.
You see, everyone of us, including me, has read many books in his/her life
and some of them are great; You read them and you think Man, this really
speaks to me. But, you see, with Salinger's books for me it's not like they
are a tool for me to understand better life, or myself, or whatever; when I
read them it's like I'm touching life itself. No tool, no intermediate. They
are the real thing. They sound real 'cause you can open a page at random and
feel exactly as you would feel entering a room and listening to a
conversation; they feel real 'cause what is said there, and the way it is
said, expresses something that you never quite could make out but that you
instantaneously recognise like you recognise your picture in the mirror.
Like you see somebody's face in the mirror and, even if neither you nor
anybody else has ever seen it, you immediately recognise it.
I could say that I see in his books the same thing I see in life and that I
thought I was the only one seeing, and at the same time, they make me look
at life in a totally different way I had never conceived of before.
I'm not even getting close here.... Reading Salinger has often on me the
effect that meditating on a koan has. Yes, that's more it. That gentleness,
that beauty, that truth, that humour, that intensity. It smells and tastes
the same to me, and it's so overwhelming that sometimes I just weep. It's
not even something I actively do: My eyes simply give out.
I'm sorry.... I should be Salinger himself to be able to say what I mean....
Tania
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